Keep the sea lanes open

The killing on May 9 of a Taiwanese fisherman by gunfire from a Philippines navy warship underscores the tense situation involving states bordering on the South China Sea. One need not accept Taiwan’s...

Comment

Posted Jun. 4, 2013 @ 12:01 am

The killing on May 9 of a Taiwanese fisherman by gunfire from a Philippines navy warship underscores the tense situation involving states bordering on the South China Sea.

One need not accept Taiwan’s (and China’s) expansive views of the Middle Kingdom’s seabed domains to agree that the death of Hong Shi-cheng was a tragic over-reaction by Filipino forces to a Taiwanese fishing boat discovered in its exclusive economic zone.

The Philippines’s claim rests on its participation in the Law of the Sea treaty, which, among other things, grants maritime nations rights to offshore resources within a limit, usually 200 miles. China’s preposterous but menacing claim to virtually the entire South China Sea, which puts it at odds with Indonesia and Vietnam as well as the Philippines, seems to derive from that body of water’s name. Taiwan (aka the Republic of China) adheres to China’s claim. This is in connection to its official, if fantastical, stance that the ROC is the rightful government of China. China, for its part, still maintains that Taiwan is a province of China. (We consider Taiwan to be an independent and admirably democratic nation.)

China’s claim is particularly pernicious in that it can use it to maintain at least a theoretical right to interdict sea traffic through the South China Sea and such other waters as the Yellow Sea and the Taiwan Straits. This is in direct contravention of the Law of the Sea Treaty, which it signed, and conflicts with the U.S. Navy, which is committed to free passage in international sea lanes for vessels of all flags.

Freedom of the seas, a principle dating back to the 17th Century, when its chief enforcer was Britain’s Royal Navy, is an essential condition for thriving global trade. Meanwhile, China has in recent years greatly increased the size and range of its naval forces, contributing to the destabilization of East and Southeast Asia.

China and Taiwan should revisit their maritime policies before there is big trouble in the South Sea.